. Science-gossip . umference ofthe stem. This same arrangement, which is ex-pressed by the fraction two-fifths, is found in theapple, the cherry, and various plants. Position of Flowers.—The oak, like the beech, ismonoecious, the staminate and pistillate organsbeing in separate flowers although borne on thesame tree. The inflorescence is lateral—never, Ibelieve, terminal—and therefere never interruptingthe growth of the leading shoot. The staminate bud formed. The varying length of this pedunclehas already been mentioned. In the oak we do notfind, as in the lime, a leaf-bud formed in the samea
. Science-gossip . umference ofthe stem. This same arrangement, which is ex-pressed by the fraction two-fifths, is found in theapple, the cherry, and various plants. Position of Flowers.—The oak, like the beech, ismonoecious, the staminate and pistillate organsbeing in separate flowers although borne on thesame tree. The inflorescence is lateral—never, Ibelieve, terminal—and therefere never interruptingthe growth of the leading shoot. The staminate bud formed. The varying length of this pedunclehas already been mentioned. In the oak we do notfind, as in the lime, a leaf-bud formed in the sameaxil as that from which the fruit-stalk springs, butthe fruit-stalk, when falling off, leaves a scar closelyjoined with, and on the inner side of, that left by theleaf in whose axil it originated. It may, perhaps,be that the abnormal formation of a small leaf-budnear the tip of a peduncle, as just now mentioned,indicates that the peduncle itself would not fall offwith the acorns, but would remain and develop a. Querctis sessiliflora. (Autumnal state.) flowers are arranged in loose catkins which springin tufts, without any leafy accompaniment, fromaxillary buds on the lower portion of the previousyears woody shoot. The axillary buds on theupper portion of the same shoot give rise to newshoots, from the axils of whose leaves (commonlyabout the seventh leaf and onwards towards thetip) the fertile inflorescence takes its rise. Thefertile flowers, and the acorns which succeed them,are borne on a stalk or peduncle of varying length,and near the tip of which we sometimes find a leaf- weakly shoot in the following year. I have notbeen able to make certain as to this. In the oak we find the peculiarity that thestaminate flowers spring from the wood of the pastyear, the fertile ones from the shoot of the presentseason. If, then, we examine, towards the close ofsummer, the shoots of the past arid present seasons,we find the lower part of last years wood bare ofleaves, and showing onl
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